Dr James Wilson – just not that Dr James Wilson
When the TV drama ‘House’ was at the peak of its popularity, at least 2-3 patients a week would ask me if I knew this guy – the character, Dr James Wilson from the show.
Now, it’s only a couple of patients a month that ask, but he clearly made an impact on the audience as they still remember him despite the show finishing in 2012.
Curiosity still hasn’t got the better of me. I’ve not watched a single episode of House. But when a patient told me that I shared a lot in common with the character, I thought it at least warranted a Google.
From what I read, for the most part, I am incredibly flattered. House is a modern take on the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. They’ve been updated and relocated to a hospital setting. Wilson is the Watson to House’s Holmes. Reading the Sherlock Holmes stories as a child, I always preferred the loyal, sensitive, considered Watson to Holmes – who I always considered to be a bit flashy!
Google tells me that the fictional Dr James Wilson is compassionate and empathetic. He acts as the moral compass for the maverick, but ethically questionable House. Which are, of course, characteristics that I’m grateful to be associated with, but part of me also worries that he might be the sort of person I’d not be rushing to meet at a party.
A quick trip to YouTube put my mind at ease. Dr James Wilson also seems to be quite humorous and light-hearted, something that I hope I can be too. I’ve seen how maintaining a sense of fun has helped many of my patients – particularly when their treatment and the choices they sometimes have to make can feel difficult and heavy. I always think a person’s ability to laugh is a good indicator of how they are doing. I’ll always aim to maintain your quality of life – which must include play and fun.
I did, of course, recognise the actor who plays my namesake – Robert Sean Leonard. Though I only really know him from the late 80s classic ‘The Dead Poets Society’. I watched this again recently and enjoyed it as much as I did then. It’s become a little hackneyed, but ‘Carpe Diem’ really isn’t a bad philosophy for life. Though for whatever reason, the quote from that film that still rings in my ears is the warning that ‘Sucking the marrow out of life doesn’t mean choking on the bone’ which probably gives you too much of an insight into how I differ from the Dr James Wilson from the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.